Share This Story!

Analysis: Penske sticks with drivers through it all

Whether he's slamming with his competitors on the track or screaming at them in the pit, it's evident Joey Logano is trying a reinvention by reasserting himself this season. But are we seeing a new, feisty

Whether he's slamming with his competitors on the track or screaming at them in the pits, it's evident Joey Logano is trying a reinvention by reasserting himself this season.

But are we seeing a new, feisty side of Logano's 76-year-old team owner, too?

There has been no diminishment of the pristine and vaunted brand that is Roger Penske. Arguably the most successful owner in racing history, he also is its most image-conscious. The man whose cars have won a record 15 Indianapolis 500s also brought brooms and buttoned-up starched shirts to the grease-stained floors of Gasoline Alley.

On the heels of his first Sprint Cup championship while still a force in the Izod IndyCar Series, the septuagenarian is at the peak of his powers in being able to leverage his political capital to bend the racing world to his will — even though his racing organization has taken its share of public relations hits the last two years.

Last year, it was A.J. Allmendinger who was fired by Penske after failing a drug test near the midpoint of his first season with the team.

Penske, though, still had Allmendinger's back, treating him as a surrogate son and giving him a second chance in IndyCar this season.

The same has been true with his unwavering support of Brad Keselowski, who brought Penske his first NASCAR title but who has an outspokenness and penchant for pushing the bounds of a politically correct world, whether it's on the sports pages of USA TODAY, social media or SportsCenter.

Such loyalty to drivers who have committed transgressions hasn't always been true in the organization.

When Paul Tracy stirred controversy on a regular basis for Team Penske in the mid-1990s in Indy car, he was summarily fired after the 1997 season despite notching 11 victories in a four-year span with the team.

"Paul, some of that was his own doing," Penske said. "There's a few guys who don't graduate. That's OK, right? I just want you to realize one thing: We don't have an environment where no one fails. Just remember that. Put that clear."

But Penske currently has a reputation for going to the mat like few others in the sport when his drivers are in the crossfire.

There are notable exceptions, such as Tracy and Kurt Busch, who had the temerity to address the venerable automotive icon as "Dude" on the team radio in one of a series of embarrassingly petulant outbursts.

The Logano episode, though, illustrates that Penske is taking no guff from anyone— even superstars he openly has courted for an Indy 500 ride.

Aside from vigorously defending Logano, telling USA TODAY Sports "I'm 150% behind my driver, and I think he's a real star on the team,", he also accused Tony Stewart (the same three-time champion he wooed last year to race for him at Indy) of hypocrisy while upbraiding him for making "unwarranted" comments.

That's about as close to smack talk as you're going to get from the a billionaire who can rattle off his Fortune 500 sponsors' market capitalizations with perfect elocution and is a consensus-building mogul who races and sells the makes of rival car manufacturers without a hint of awkwardness or conflict.

Logano no longer has his father, Tom, meddling in his racetrack affairs, which is good. Instead, he has the savviest businessman in racing squarely in his corner, which is much better.

That isn't a crutch for Logano, 22, the product of a well-to-do family in Middletown, Conn., that funded his career without worry until he caught the eye of veteran Mark Martin and became NASCAR's hottest prospect a decade ago.

An underlying resentment gradually has built around Logano since to a disdain among some veterans that was palpable in Stewart's postrace interviews Sunday.

"He's nothing but a little rich kid that has never had to work in his life," the three-time champion alleged after being angry that Logano had blocked him before tangling with Denny Hamlin in a crash that put Hamlin in the hospital.

The Nationwide debut in May 2008 by the driver once nicknamed "Sliced Bread" was promoted incessantly by a countdown clock on the website of a NASCAR merchandiser itching to move diecasts as soon as he began whipping veterans two decades his senior.

Through four seasons in NASCAR's premier series that have brought two wins and no Chase for the Sprint Cup berths, that memory has been hard to shake.

That might be the reason Logano has seemed so eager to engage rivals the last two weeks. At some point, he is going to need to kick someone's butt. Or get it kicked.

If he does, it will be Penske who embraces him first — helping him off the canvas like a grizzled trainer protecting a prized heavyweight with great potential.